Kit Kat Week Part 1 - A Quick Look At The History Of Kit Kat Flavours

Over the last decade or so Kit Kat has gone through a renaissance of sorts. Kit Kat has been a staple in the candy bar world since its creation in the 1930s in the city of York. Created by the Rowntree company the brand has since changed hands several times and is now manufactured by two different companies, Hershey’s in the USA and Nestle everywhere else in the world. Some would argue that Nestle has the superior product, and that the bar improves depending on where you buy it.

For most of the life of this bar, the Kit Kat has remained unchanged. 4 fingers featuring wafers, milk chocolate and a subtle filling between the wafers. The format can differ depending on where you get it, and a few places have offered variations in the number of fingers, however the basics of the bar never really changed much at all.

It wasn't until 1996 when the first variety of Kit Kat was introduced, orange. It was first released in the UK, and then spread around the world fairly quickly. Other flavours followed including dark chocolate and mint. These early flavours are considered to be fairly safe. Early on the Kit Kat bar varieties used flavours that are well known to work with chocolate.

It wasn't until around the  turn of the millennium that things started to go a little extreme. In the 1990s Kit Kat Japan started to introduce special flavours of Kit Kats to represent certain regions  of Japan. This is a common tradition in Japanese foods, each region has great pride in locally made products, and will often sell these products in local shops dedicated  to the region. Kit Kat Japan wanted to sell their bars to people that had pride in their local products and decided to cross over this Japanese tradition with their bar.

As time  went on, more and more flavours started to come out of these local areas, and soon Kit Kat was producing a new flavour to celebrate particular traditions or areas of Japan every month. With strange flavours like wasabi and soya sauce, it didn't take long for the internet to catch up to this trend, and Japanese Kit Kat bars became things of legend in Western Countries.

CC